Authors

Tea Tutberidze¹;  ¹ King’s College London,

Discussion

I will discuss Ukraine's and Georgia's future with NATO and the European Union and aims to fill a gap within the understanding of the problems from a geopolitical point of view and represents and analyse them from a different angle and perspective.

The paper aims to provides long term observations, thoughts  and analyses of pro-democracy and rule of law reforms in Ukraine  and Georgia after the collapse of the Soviet Union and to assist not only these countries but also the relevant international society and policy makers to find a right direction in the future to help develop the rule of law and democracy there. It is an attempt to show real reasons why Ukraine and Georgia could not manage to develop working democracy (so far) and for example how Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia managed to achieve it. What have been the stumbling blocks for Ukraine and Georgia to have had progress to develop democracy after the USSR came to an end.

Assessing the external and internal factors, causes and consequences give an interesting picture and will help participants  and international society for the future improvement in democracy  in Ukraine and Georgia.    

Another important part of the paper will be whether the theories of democratisation and liberal theories are able to give a clear explanation for how countries who want to build democracy can deal with powerful countries which are not democratic, have totalitarian regimes (like Russia) and engage in destabilising activities against these small countries (like Georgia and Ukraine) who wants to develop democratically.  

Ukraine and Georgia try to develop working democracies since they gained independence again after the collapse of the Soviet Union. However, they have faced external threats and interference from the Russian Federation as well as the wars from Russia. It is important to see what impact Russia’s interference has had on these countries’ democratic development, likewise whether democratisation theories and the theory of liberalism consider and explain the situation that Ukraine and Georgia have come up against.